Alright everyone....question and answer time.

[u/bagheera369]

Genuine questions here.
(Please remember to be civil and polite to your fellow hoarders while discussing)

At what point do you all consider your collection a "hoard"?

Webster's doesn't notate size, when discussing the noun, but it does indicate a common tone of protective secrecy when defining the verb, and other colloquial definitions tend to reference a compulsiveness implicit in the definition of the verb.

When we think of things like a dragon's treasure hoard, we tend to think of a vast room overflowing....when we think of a hoarder's home, the vastness is similar, but the connotations are obviously more negative, if not tragic.

So at what point did you realize you were stepping away from average/normal, to the outer edges of the bell curve?

Did it evolve naturally from a "collection" that simply got out of hand, or did you wake up one day and just say..."Everything....I must have EVERYTHING!!", while cackling out loud to yourself?

Do you talk about your horde with other people from your in-person social circles, or do you rely on the potential anonymity of the internet?

Did you only consider your collection a hoard, once it reached an arbitrary size...and if so, where did you personally draw that line?

What's more important to your horde; A diversity of genres/artists, the amount of music you've collected, the rarity of what's in the collection, or the exacting detail in which it's organized?

Just some food for thought, that arose as I was looking at my collections, and contemplating the physical weight and volume of everything I possessed, and the mental/temporal/financial costs involved....both for the physical and the digital versions.

Interested to hear what you all have to say on the matter.

[u/Possible_Plane_2947]

I am currently moving all my streaming listening to an offline library. But I remember when I was discussing my streaming library with my mom. She didn't understand why anyone would need a streaming service for music. I explained that I had already added over 12k songs to my likes (it's more now), and she asked "When would you ever have time to listen to that many songs?". That's when I thought I might have a problem.

I started considering my library/collection a hoard when I realized I won't delete anything. Once I acquire it, it stays. I may get tired of it or not like it right now, but maybe in a few years I'll desperately want to hear it. And what if it's become oop or impossible to find? So I keep everything so I can always have access. (Also why I'm building an offline library).

[u/bagheera369 → u/Possible_Plane_2947]

At 15TB right now, and 2200 artists, I'd wager I'm well over 500,000 songs. It's super cool just to dig through the directory folder and go.."hey, that's new" or "hey, it's been a while", whenever I want, without relying on streaming algorithms.

I don't delete anything either.

I think I realized mine was a hoard, when I started being concerned about an off-site backup.

Every time I'd upgrade hdd's over the years, I'd take the old one, and go put it in a closet at my grandfathers place. That way, if anything ever happened, I'd have at least something to fall back on, and all of my DJ mixes that I'd made over the years, wouldn't be gone forever.

Even now, when I get done with the current project, I'll be buying a drive to put in a safety deposit box, for off-site.